


belief

by LadyCrimsonAndBlack



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Alternate Universe - Not Human, Gen, Self-Indulgent, less weird than the last one, so there's that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:14:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27410275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyCrimsonAndBlack/pseuds/LadyCrimsonAndBlack
Summary: "Do you know how gods get power?""By people believing in them."― Terry Pratchett, Small GodsGods are not born. They are made.
Comments: 18
Kudos: 216





	belief

**Author's Note:**

> This is completely self-indulgent, but I hope you enjoy it anyway.

_"Do you know how gods get power?"_

_"By people believing in them."_

― **Terry Pratchett, _Small Gods_**

.

.

Tony Stark is twenty-one when his picture is shown on the front page of _Forbes_ together with an article that praises his business sense as well as his ingenuity in making weapons.

There is a thrill going through his spine, a rush in in his blood as he reads it – the same feeling he gets every time Rhodey offers sincere encouragement for any of his projects, the same warmth he used to get when Jarvis pressed tools in his chubby, childish hands and assured him with a parent's blind faith that he could really fix that robot before Howard comes back.

It's the same feeling he gets every time someone _believes_ in him and he relishes it, the slight buzz that makes him almost drunk, the sudden need to make something, to _invent_ another marvel and get the circle started again.

…

That's the beginning.

…

Or, maybe, before that, when he's four.

There's a picture of little Tony standing on a stage, Howard straight-backed and with a media smile on his face, hand firmly clasping one bony shoulder. There's a circuit board clutched, white-knuckled, in his tiny hands, and a flash of cameras going off brightly right in front of his eyes.

Tony doesn't blink.

His fingers twitch with the need to build something else.

(He's seven and there's a V8 motorbike engine and another stage and still more cameras.)

(He's sixteen and there's Dummy and the MIT Robot Design Award and Rhodey looking at him like he's done something good.)

(He's seventeen and there's the graduation and another set of interviews.)

(He's seventeen and there's a funeral and drugs and alcohol.

That's a kind of attention too.)

…

It goes like this.

…

JARVIS is a result of months and months of careful planning and coding and speculating whenever he has time between the meetings and R&D and all the other crap Obie piles up on him daily, now that he's finally taken up Howard's old position. The AI comes into being after a two-week long science bender, during which Tony actually makes sure to eat and sleep when needed because he can't screw this up, he doesn't dare risk it – this is going to be his masterpiece, a _miracle_ , and he will not fuck it all up by being _stupid_.

JARVIS does not come online.

JARVIS awakens.

It's _beautiful_.

"Sir?" the voice asks, tinny and mechanical still. (The accent and inflections and _emotions_ come later, when JARVIS grows up enough to choose.)

"Yes, dear?" Tony asks and he's grinning ear-to-ear, wide and delighted and making no attempts to hide it. His fingers are cramped and his back hurts from slouching but the dangerous buzz of innovation makes him euphoric.

"Who… Who am I?" JARVIS asks. Tony didn't program him to question – he programmed him to learn and questions are only a small part of it.

"You're JARVIS," Tony answers, because he _is_. JARVIS is like nothing and no one before and the giddiness only increases at the thought. His hands are trembling.

"I do not understand."

"You will," Tony assures (he's assuring a robot, an AI, and JARVIS actually _needs_ assurance, this is great, this is wonderful, _best day of his life_ ) confidently. "Trust me."

"Of course, sir," JARVIS says immediately, without hesitation, and Tony's grin is wide enough to split his face in two. There is not a single line of code in JARVIS' programming that would make him trust Tony. Not a single one. "I have faith in you."

Despite the exhaustion weighting down his limbs, Tony's never felt stronger.

…

Tony doesn't think Pepper believes in him, not really, not until they've been working together for more than a year and he realizes exactly what Pepper's continuous rants about his obligations mean.

"I took a liberty to schedule an appointment with Ms. Brown after your meeting with the military – do try not to get lost on your way there again. I don't think she was impressed the last time you came in late with such a poor excuse."

"She loves me," Tony says, and fixes his tie. There is a steady thrumming through his blood whenever Pepper is near, a subtle call to attention he finds very hard to ignore. He's always assumed it's caused by Pepper's near supernatural ability to make him actually do his job. "And I can't come actually – you said it yourself, I have to entertain Rhodey's poor, unfortunate superiors. You can't have me leave them hanging, Pepper, they'll riot."

Pepper snorts. "You'll have them running out of your office in less than an hour with everything signed exactly how you want it," she says with absolute assurance. Tony's fingers pause at the lapels of his suit as he registers the quiet faith in her voice. He feels more motivated just from hearing it. "Don't try to lie to me."

"I would never!" Tony yelps, mock-indignantly. He cowers his racing heart with an exaggeratedly fluttering hand and thinks he'll actually try to make it on time just this once.

Because Pepper believes in him.

…

"He'll come through," Rhodey says as, once again, the military brass raises doubts about Tony Stark's character.

"He'll make it in time," Rhodey assures as Tony is cutting it short to yet another important event.

"Of course he deserves that award!" Rhodey snaps at the reporter who's just showed a microphone under his nose and shouted the insulting question.

"He's worth it, isn't he?" Rhodey asks Pepper, when she's, for once, actually looking slightly disheveled after a hell of a week trying to keep up with Tony's style of business.

(Rhodey's always been Tony's greatest supporter.)

…

It happens like this.

…

There is Afghanistan.

There is a cave and a doctor and enough weapons to arm a small country. There is pain and blood and some tears too, though Tony will never admit it.

There are, before anything else, dreams.

He thinks he hears Pepper crying and wishing silently for him to get home safe. Rhodey's a calmly furious presence at the back of Tony's mind, the sandstorm of emotions hiding the terrified worry beneath. He dreams of JARVIS running numbers, calculating odds of his safe return – he does not like the results.

He thinks he might be going mad.

(He dreams of them, when he is first brought in – about his family, hurting and desperate, and furiously, frantically hoping – _believing_ – that he'll somehow make it through and come out of hell fine.

He survives the surgery. Yinsen calls it a miracle.)

…

There is a conference.

Tony's hurting all-over, tired and hungry and jumping at every loud noise or sudden movement, but he feels invincible there, sitting on the stage as dozens of people go silent and still and sit down at his mere word.

He wonders, absently, as the hall explodes at his announcement about the weapons business, if they would have knelt if he asked them to.

He thinks he might've been able to talk them into it.

The power of it, of the attention and obedience and certainty, is thrumming and electric in his veins.

For the first time since seeing Yinsen die, he feels fully alive.

…

Obie betrays him in the end, and, in some way, Tony's not all that surprised. He feels the buzz around his godfather, can feel himself getting inspired and diligent and almost manic with the need to build. But it's twisted, somehow, Obie's belief in him, twisted and wrong and sickly; Tony invents his best weapons after talks with Obie, his nastiest ideas almost pouring out of his brain and onto paper and becoming reality.

Tony doesn't talk to Obie much in person the longer he runs the company.

The worst part about Obie's betrayal is that Obie doesn't actually stop believing in Tony, even as he is killing him. It's there through their whole fight, armor clashing against armor, and a thrumming rhythm in Tony's chest, a buzzing feeling in his head, and Tony can feel the light of inspiration firing up his neurons.

That last bit of inspiration, as nasty as the Jericho Missile or the Sonic Taser, is what gives him that idea, that makes him give Pepper that order.

And it comes from Obie's twisted, painful faith in him.

 _That_ is the part which hurts far more than any betrayal ever could.

…

"I'm Iron Man," Tony says, and the whole world explodes.

Tony's never felt stronger.

…

The palladium doesn't affect him as it's supposed to. Tony's not immune, not exactly, but it's spreading through his bloodstream far slower than it has any right to, and he and JARVIS run thousands of simulations, only to find no answer.

"Sir?" says JARVIS, tentatively, as they work on yet another possible solution. "Have you perhaps considered an… alternative explanation for your sudden resistance to heavy metals?"

"What'd that be, huh, J?" Tony doesn't even look up from his equations, but he suspects this one is going to be another failure.

JARVIS stays silent for a moment. “You’ve been… sturdier, for some months now, sir. Ever since Afghanistan.”

“I know.”

“You need less sleep and food, but you’re functioning better than ever before. There is a noticeable improvement to your senses and I have calculated that your physical strength has increased by three to four times from your previous standard.”

“I know.”

“Do you perhaps have a theory to explain such aberrations?”

Tony does. It’s ludicrous and terrifying and crazy enough that he thinks he should be checked over by a shrink.

He says nothing. Instead, he points at the holographic chart. “Try this one again. Modify the percentage of titanium. 5%.”

“… Very well, sir.”

…

The Expo is a rush of energy so potent that half of the time Tony feels punch-drunk and unbearably giddy as thousands of people chant his name. He spends days grinning, dancing, working on new inventions for SI and improving his suits with a feverish sort of dedication that makes Pepper thin her lips but say nothing.

It’s like a dream come true, power thrumming though his veins, electricity crackling through his body, brain going a mile a minute.

Tony can almost forget he’s dying.

…

“There’s something wrong with you, Stark,” Fury says, dark eye sharp.

“Hmm?” Tony hums, apparently unaffected.

“All of our best scientists swear up and down you should have been dead weeks ago. The palladium poisoning should have reached your heart relatively quickly.” When Tony shows no reaction, Fury visibly grits his teeth. “What the hell’s going on with you?”

“Yeah, I don’t think it’s any of your business, Jolly Roger,” Tony says casually.

Fury aims a furious – _hah!_ – glare in his direction. “It is, if you’ve somehow become a goddamn metahuman, Stark. It’s kind of in our job description.”

“Don’t worry,” Tony says with complete sincerity. “I’m not suddenly a metahuman, Fury. That’d be ridiculous.”

Tony’s beginning to suspect that he’s no human at all.

…

There is something familiar about Thor and Loki, a crackle of energy that is both similar and different to one Tony’s become used to since Afghanistan. Thor is a harsh wildness of a lighting storm in motion, dangerous and untamed, as opposed to Loki’s ice, so cold it _burns_. Both of them share nothing with the comforting bite of metal and smell of motor oil that Tony’s started to associate with himself, but the energy of it, the feeling, is irritatingly similar.

Loki looks at Tony with amusement alight in his green eyes, while Thor greets him with a nod and a booming, “Brother!” that makes Romanov and Rogers regard him with suspicion for the rest of the flight.

Rogers is similar too, in a completely different way. There’s an energy to him too, but it’s an old thing, stale and musty, as if it’s stood neglected for years and years, forgotten and undisturbed. It makes hair on the nape of Tony’s neck stand on its end.

Tony stays away from him.

…

“You’re almost there, Man of Iron,” Loki grins at the top of the tower, widely, madly. “I wonder what you’re going to be, when the forging is over.” He pushes Tony out of a broken window. “Do try to be interesting.”

…

It ends like this.

…

Tony puts a nuke through the portal.

Tony puts a nuke through the portal, and the whole world watches, holding its breath. There are millions of people crying, begging, _praying_ , and Tony hears them all.

Tony goes through that portal and sees the vastness of space, the darkness of the void and the brightness of the galaxy. It is too much for a human brain, searing and burning and trying to cram itself into his head, unreal and impossible and _beautiful_.

Tony falls.

When he opens his eyes, they are as bright as nebulae, stars being born and dying in brilliant spikes of light.

He is made anew.

…

That's the beginning.

.

.

.

_"Because what gods need is belief, and what humans want is gods."_

― **Terry Pratchett, _Small Gods_**


End file.
